Title: Planets All in a Row.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For our last little bit today, you've heard of getting your ducks in a row, which evidently comes from the game of pool and not the birds. For the next couple of nights, we have our planets all in a row. All seven planets, sorry, Pluto, appear in a line in the sky and you can spot if the clouds break, five of them, without a telescope.

To explain what's going on, how and when to look up, and just how rare this is, we're joined once again by Jackie Faherty, an astrophysicist and educator at the American Museum of Natural History. Listeners, we'll invite you in, too. Any astronomers, amateur or professional, who are excited for this parade of planets or have already checked it out, call or text us, your solar system glee, or if you have suggestions for where to view the planetary parade. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text. I guess if any astrologers want to weigh in on this, it has significance to you, you can, too. Welcome back to the show astrophysicist Jackie Faherty. We won't ask your sun sign.

Jackie Faherty: Yes, we're going to skip over that part. Happy to explain lots about it, but we're going to stick to maybe planets today.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. How unusual is this planet parade, as I think it's being called?

Jackie Faherty: The planet parade is a really nice way of saying it. It's actually not that rare or uncommon to have this happen. It really depends on what you're asking, so we should talk about what the phenomenon is. The planets all go around the sun like racers on a racetrack. If you've ever been to a track and tried to go running, I go to Riverbank all the time, you're going around and around and around, other people might be going, and some of them are going to be behind you, some of them are going to be to the left of you. All the planets are doing that, and they move at different speeds. There's an inside track and an outside track. Mercury is on the inside track. We're in the middle.

Right now, what's happening is that the planets are on the same side of the track. It doesn't mean they're all up in a line where you could point your finger and all of them are going to follow a line down your finger, but what it does mean is that there's going to be a line across the sky at night where you could go outside, find a dark spot, stare up, and you'd see them. All are going to set in a line and they're going to march down, but you would see them across your sky and they would form this arc above your head.

You can see five of them with your naked eye right now, which is the thing that's really fun. It's a challenge to get yourself outside. You can use your eyeballs to find five of them with your eye right now.

Brian Lehrer: I see those five are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. How do we know we're seeing a planet and not stars?

Jackie Faherty: Yes, that's the common question we get. First, the brightest thing in the sky is going to be the sun. That's not a mystery question. That's not a mystery. Then it's the moon. Then after the moon, Venus is really bright. The first thing you're going to see when the sun sets is Venus is going to pop out at you. Now, ask yourself right away, that brightest thing you see, you're going to win with Venus and at least find that as the brightest next thing you see once the sun sets.

Then for the rest of the planets, they're going to be bright. The nice thing about planets versus stars is that they're closer to us by a very large amount. They don't twinkle as much because we can resolve a little bit more of them with our eye. They won't have the same kind of look that the stars do. That's the best that I can give you. That's actually kind of hard for most people to differentiate, especially when we're in light-polluted New York. First and foremost, go for the bright thing, find Venus, and then it'll help you find the other ones.

Brian Lehrer: "We think we're watching all the planets," a listener texts. "All the planets are watching Earth this weekend, turning it on its head." Barbara in Rockaway, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Barbara.

Barbara: Thank you for taking my call. First-time caller, long-time listener. My dad's favorite word was syzygy. S-Y-Z-Y-G-Y. I've used the word for 70 years. He told me it was when all the planets line up, so I believe this is what we're going to be seeing.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Do you know that word syzygy in which Y is the only vowel?

Jackie Faherty: That's a very good trivia word because there are no vowels in that one. A syzygy is a word we use in astronomy for a phenomenon when you get-- sometimes we call it a conjunction or opposition. It's a description of the location of an object relative to another object. A syzygy happens when we are, for instance, in a full moon situation. It's an orientation of where the planets are relative to you.

Brian Lehrer: I think Kevin in Denver, if he's ready to go, is going to suggest an app that will help people appreciate this. Kevin, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Kevin: Hey, how are you doing? Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Kevin: Hello?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we hear you.

Kevin: Okay, great. I'm sorry. There's an app on my phone and I'd have to look at my phone to tell you what the name of the app is, but it's really helpful in identifying these. It's a free app. You can upgrade and pay for it, but the free side is really, really good and it really helps track these planets and you can really discern, "Oh, wow, there it is. There it is." It's very cool. I would recommend that.

Brian Lehrer: You call to recommend an app that you can't remember the name of, but I guess people can search--

Kevin: Well, just Google.

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Kevin: Thanks.

Jackie Faherty: I have a couple of app suggestions for you too.

Brian Lehrer: Kevin, thank you. Go ahead, Jackie.

Jackie Faherty: For Devin and everybody else, there are two things with apps. This is, one, a warning. We are too attached to our phones. The phone is going to do something to your eyes, too, when you go outside. It's going to be bright and it might harm you from being able to see darker objects. You do want to be in a dark mode on your phone. Typically, these apps are pretty good. I like the one called Star Walk 2. Google has one called Google Sky.

My suggestion to people is you can use the app to orient yourself. You can hold it up and it's able to use any GPS to tell where you're looking at the sky. It'll orient you. Then put it away. Don't use it anymore. That's a better thing to learn a couple of the things that are in the sky and then let your mind go at what you're seeing. You don't need the phone for all of the orientation. It's just an initialization thing, and then you should be good to go with the sky.

Brian Lehrer: Another app one of my colleagues recommends, just wrote me a note, is called Night Sky. Here's a text from a listener who asks, "New York City has so much light pollution. Where should we go for optimal viewing if we're in the city?"

Jackie Faherty: I love talking about this because I also live in Manhattan and look at the sky every day. There are a couple of places that are ideal for this kind of phenomenon too. What's happening is, which I should have said, this is a really good planetary parade because it's happening close to sunset where you can catch your planet Bingo is going to happen close to sunset, which means that you don't have to get up in early hours in the morning.

What you want to be is close to a western view in Manhattan. That's the water. You want to look towards New Jersey. Get yourself close to the greenway of New York. It's really good. What you're going to find as a New Yorker, probably, is a bunch of people lined up. An amateur astronomer will be out there with a telescope or binoculars. I find them all the time. Some of it's organized, some of it's not. It's a great community moment where you can talk to somebody about what they're doing. We don't do that enough, I think, in New York.

Be close to the water. Otherwise, going up high is helpful. If you can get to a rooftop. I usually go to the rooftop of my building. You go to the rooftop, it gets you farther away from the ground-based light. Then try your best to make sure that there's no bright light around you, nothing in your eye, and that'll help you at least against the pain of New York sky pollution.

Brian Lehrer: How strong a telescope would you need to see Saturn's rings, for example, or the color of the planets and not just the light that they're reflecting from the sun?

Jackie Faherty: You don't actually need all that powerful of a telescope. You could actually use binoculars for some of this. Mars looks pretty good from binoculars. The one thing right now with Saturn and Saturn's rings is that it's kind of in an orientation right now. We do not have a good view of its rings. You have to wait a bit of time so that we orient again so we see the tilt of Saturn so that we can see the rings really well. If you're a bird watcher out there, a lot of people have excellent binoculars for bird watching. Those same bird-watching binoculars could help you differentiate the moons of Jupiter or even the rings of Saturn.

Brian Lehrer: More people are chiming in with more apps that people can use for this. A listener suggests something called StarMap 3D. Another one with Star Tracker. I guess our caller Kevin in Denver was right. There are a bunch of them. Just go on Google App for this thing if none of these names and recommendations from our guests or listeners have landed with you. A listener writes as a way to tell if you're seeing a planet as opposed to a star, "Planets reflect light. Stars produce light, so they twinkle." Is that correct?

Jackie Faherty: There's a truth to this, that planets are reflecting. They also are radiating light. It's just at a wavelength that your eye isn't necessarily detecting. It doesn't have to do with the kind of production of light you're getting. It's everything to do with the Earth's atmosphere and then how far away the object is. Stars are so far away from you that they're basically at infinity. They're a point of light. The planets are close enough that you're actually able to resolve more of their disk. That's part of why you're seeing them reflect. The caller is correct that stars are different from planets in the way that you're getting light from them.

Brian Lehrer: 15 seconds left. How long will this last?

Jackie Faherty: You got to go out now. Really, if you want to do planet Bingo, which is what I'm calling it, where you can catch all of the planets, you only have a couple more nights with Saturn. Saturn is going to end up falling below the horizon. If you want to do Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury, you still have a couple of weeks. Probably, let's say two and a half, three weeks, where you're still okay. Jupiter and Mars and Venus are going to be hanging out with us for a while, so don't discount the beautiful bright ones that are up there.

Brian Lehrer: Jackie Faherty, astrophysicist and educator at the American Museum of Natural History. Thanks for sharing so much insight into what's going on in the night sky. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Jackie Faherty: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today. Thanks for listening, and stay tuned for Alison.

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